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Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

bbc.com

11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#11
I wonder how many compromises of quality go into a robotic pizza?

You're not getting a robot to stretch out a 16" New York style crust; you might get it to crudely roll out a ball of dough into a thick disk. I'm sure there are certain toppings that are easy to lay out (sausage balls) and some that are difficult (onion slices) so those might get left off.

At a certain point you're adapting a good pizza recipe into a pizza that can be made by a robot, and at that point you're basically just making a frozen pizza on-the-spot and charging a lot for it.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#13

> Many people enjoy hand-crafted pizza, though, I suggest. Doesn't a machine making your dinner take away the human connection we might otherwise feel with food? " Not just pizza/food ...but this applies to emails and written documents now.

"I have really enjoyed that hand-crafted email" is not something you hear from actual people in real life. I am saying this non-ironically as I understand what you are talking about, but very few people are geeky about how the document or email is written and thought out. Which is the whole reason we see these insane adoption levels of AI slop documents and emails nowadays.

I have heard multiple people say almost that exact sentence unironically.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#15
I've had my fair share of shitty human made pizza so this kind of sounds like the autonomous taxi news cycle to me

Thousands of car crashes a day > not a news

A Waymo crashed > national news

Humans making shitty pizza is not a news. But robots burning a pizza is a news. It'll get better.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#16
post #9

A local pizza place sells premade dough and toppings. We just order that and cook it ourselves. It’s not perfect but it’s exactly the way we want it and we get to bond over making it. If I’m going to blow pizza-level calories in a meal, I can’t imagine going back at this point.

Good pizza is all about having a good hot oven. Without it I see no benefit of using these fresh ingredients vs frozen pizza.

"Making" the pizza with a premade dough and pre-cut toppings is just a 1 minute operation to spread sauce and throw some toppings on it isn't it? Not much bonding there in my eyes...

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#17

Food production lines have been built to standardise everything so that (for example) the dough is all the same consistency so it all behaves the same way and squishes into the same size circle when you flatten it. It seems like humans deal with inconsistencies way better than simple mechanical systems, but I wonder how long it will be until we see robotic food systems which adapt to the specific food which they are…

Most frozen pizza crusts aren't even squished flat, its a large continuous sheet of dough which gets circles stamped out of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-2gdkOe3A

The waste gets cycled back through.

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#19

I've had my fair share of shitty human made pizza so this kind of sounds like the autonomous taxi news cycle to me Thousands of car crashes a day > not a news A Waymo crashed > national news Humans making shitty pizza is not a news. But robots burning a pizza is a news. It'll get better.

Good old "It'll get better".

Re: Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing

#20

I wonder how many compromises of quality go into a robotic pizza? You're not getting a robot to stretch out a 16" New York style crust; you might get it to crudely roll out a ball of dough into a thick disk. I'm sure there are certain toppings that are easy to lay out (sausage balls) and some that are difficult (onion slices) so those might get left off. At a certain point you're adapting a good pizza recipe into a p…

I don't think any compromises are required. The quality of a pizza mostly comes from the quality of the ingredients and a pizza is otherwise simple to make and bake. Yes I am sure that some toppings are more difficult than others but that is really the key problem to be solved by any robotic pizza makers. If some toppings are current too hard and left off then that's a compromise on choice.
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